Teenage Zombies (1959)

*

A South American scientist, experimenting on a gas capsule which will turn Americans into mindless zombies to control, has an island laboratory with test subjects. Four teenagers find the island while on a boating trip, stumbling upon zombies and the scientist, with a hulking slave named Ivan who obeys her every command and subdues the kids, imprisoning them. The teenagers’ friends and their local law enforcement will conduct a search for them.

Producer/director Jerry Warren probably gathered together some actors and friends from the local Playhouse theater to star in this corny, no-budget horror/sci-fi schlock using mad science, mind-controlled human zombies, and the commie threat as themes for his movie.



The “golly, gee whiz!” acting style, with all the heightened melodramatics, from the “teenagers” (they all look like they are in their twenties) can become tiresome, unless you get a kick out of these sorts of performances—instead of talking to each other, we get a lot of “loud” conversations where the cast attempt to put emphasis on the dialogue.

The sets are as cheap as you can expect from a Warren production. There are sidesplitting scenes where the adults talk down to the teenagers, like when the sheriff scolds two kids who come to him believing the scientist on the island is holding their buddies hostage, as if they were uneducated children.

There is, I must admit, a nice twist involving the sheriff and his association with the scientist which comments on what Hitchcock presented in the film Saboteur, that there are those hidden within our country who are secretly plotting against us. There is also an amusing scene where the teens duke it out with the scientist and two of her “clients” working for a hostile country who wants to use America as slave labor, permanently controlled with the capsule once it is perfected.


Teenage Zombies is the kind of movie shown at the drive-in playing while the teenagers were more concerned with making out than the plot or characters:the movie was basically just background noise. Ivan reminded me of Torgo from Manos:The Hands of Fate, except he never talks or trembles/fidgets. You even have a guy in a gorilla costume (you know, it’s a gorilla used in the dangerous scientist’s research who is turned loose to subdue the evil agents) and cheesy dialogue such as “Hey, anybody for horseback riding?!?!” Fans of such cinematic sludge, rejoice!

I do reckon there were some disgruntled audiences pretty pissed that the film doesn't feature teenage zombies prominently in the storyline. Shit, we barely get any mindless zombies at all, just a bunch of banal conversations about turning people into controlled slaves. You'd think Warren could have at the very least threw the dogs some bloody meat to devour, but nope, he doesn't.